A Debating Thread

To be fair, yee, both sides are guilty of forecasting of a potential future metagame. jcp goes on listing many UU / RU Pokemon that would all of a sudden see usage in OU if Rain is banned (most of his predictions being off-the-mark - Whimsicott seeing usage, really? Feraligatr seeing usage after banning Rain, REALLY?). Lavos states that "the amount of pokemon that suddenly become viable as a result of drizzle's banning outnumber those that will be negatively impacted ten to one." Where he got the figures other than from thin air is hard to say.

fat yee said:

It cannot be justified on this site to argue against the banning of a pokemon by pointing out how bad the immediately resulting metagame is, the reasons being that it contradicts our nature of making bans as simple as possible by trying to predict a whole new metagame (this is why Iconic has his speech about not voting on which meta you like better in the voting threads), and that we will be better off anyway if we discover underlying broken factors and end up banning those too.

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Making bans simple as possible is certainly one that we keep in mind, but far from being top priority, which is banning only the things that should be banned, nothing more. Politoed + Rain Abusers has been a sticky issue, because we have 2 options - ban Rain or its Abusers. Either option solves the problem. Now that we have identified the broken element(s), the next preferred step is to make the ban that have the least repercussion to the metagame. We have chosen to keep Rain in BW1 when the issue was first addressed, because banning Rain had a far more over-reaching influence (ie on par as banning Stealth Rock, for instance) than singular abusers can ever impose on the metagame. Thus, even if we did end up banning Manaphy & Thundurus-I, because of their power under Rain, the overall effect on the metagame is far more minimal than banishing Rain, an entire metagame-level archetype. Entering BW2, we ended up banning Tornadus-T, but I believe that banning 3 Pokemon broken in Rain is far more desirable still than banning Rain itself. It's not like these banned mons would be particularly happy in OU without Rain, either (Tornadus-T would be shit without Rain, Thundurus may be potentially broken regardless of Rain, etc).

Basically, if you have 2 equally viable options - you will weigh the pros and cons of each decision, and choose the one with the greater pro. So far banning Rain abusers have been the more preferable choice. Of course there would be a time where we ban TOO MANY Rain abusers (ie banning Gyarados, Starmie, Tornadus, or even Thundurus-T), at which point banning Rain would be more desirable, but we haven't reached that point yet.

EDIT: Swift Swimmers aren't banned, and that's the beauty of Aldaron's Proposal - we were able to keep both Drizzle and Swift Swimmers in OU without banning anything. If anything, Swift Swimmers would be worse off with the banishment of Drizzle (and worst off if Swift Swim was banned), since the popularity of rain is one of the main reasons to use them in OU.

@ BKC: Also I suggest re-reading the pro-Drizzle's argument, because you obviously do not understand them well (which is NOT good, if you're debating...)

The anti-Drizzle side isn't using the forecasting of a future metagame as its main argument. We're just trying to show the pro-Drizzle side that an absence of rain isn't going to cut all the creativity out of the metagame (god forbid people use weatherless teams more! i'd forgotten that weatherless teams were just as formulaic and restricted as weather abusing teams!), since that's all the pro-Drizzle side really has going for it (well, that and the really shitty "rain isn't broken" arguments, I guess).

Of course there would be a time where we ban TOO MANY Rain abusers (ie banning Gyarados, Starmie, Tornadus, or even Thundurus-T), at which point banning Rain would be more desirable, but we haven't reached that point yet.

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Manaphy, Thundurus-I, Tornadus-T, and a million Swift Swimmers... yeah ok!

edit:

EDIT: Swift Swimmers aren't banned, and that's the beauty of Aldaron's Proposal - we were able to keep both Drizzle and Swift Swimmers in OU without banning anything. If anything, Swift Swimmers would be worse off with the banishment of Drizzle (and worst off if Swift Swim was banned), since the popularity of rain is one of the main reasons to use them in OU.

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hahahahaha you cannot be serious

you know goddamn well that i did not mean swift swim was banned as a whole, only with drizzle [although for the sake of this argument it doesn't even matter]. i'm absolutely stunned that you would even try to twist me saying that.

Making bans simple as possible is certainly one that we keep in mind, but far from being top priority, which is banning only the things that should be banned, nothing more. Politoed + Rain Abusers has been a sticky issue, because we have 2 options - ban Rain or its Abusers. Either option solves the problem.

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The entire point of the pro-ban argument dealing with 'look, x pokemon gets broken in rain (x could be Keldeo, Tentacruel, Ferrthorn, Tornadus)' is that banning individual abusers is not a good solution. Either option does not solve the rain problem because if you ban abusers, new rain abusers will continually step up to fill the roles of the ones you banned. This is why pro-banners think banning rain is the best solution.

To bring up the possibilities of a future metagame is silly, to ignore the history of BW is ignorant.

Now that we have identified the broken element(s), the next preferred step is to make the ban that have the least repercussion to the metagame. We have chosen to keep Rain in BW1 when the issue was first addressed, because banning Rain had a far more over-reaching influence (ie on par as banning Stealth Rock, for instance) than singular abusers can ever impose on the metagame. Thus, even if we did end up banning Manaphy & Thundurus-I, because of their power under Rain, the overall effect on the metagame is far more minimal than banishing Rain, an entire metagame-level archetype. Entering BW2, we ended up banning Tornadus-T, but I believe that banning 3 Pokemon broken in Rain is far more desirable still than banning Rain itself. It's not like these banned mons would be particularly happy in OU without Rain, either (Tornadus-T would be shit without Rain, Thundurus may be potentially broken regardless of Rain, etc).

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See my above comment, after we banned Torn-t there was Torn-i, and before people used either, they used Thundurus. There will not be an end until we have banned an unreasonable amount of OU viable pokemon because many pokemon may be broken with rain support. There is nothing wrong with banning an archetype outright if the existence of that archetype turns games into match-up coinflips as the pro-ban side has argued. We ban things that need to be banned, we don't protect them because of their traditional place. No one who played dpp or even bw would argue that Stealth Rocks turns games into matches decided in teambuilding and if it did that we would ban it.

Basically, if you have 2 equally viable options - you will weigh the pros and cons of each decision, and choose the one with the greater pro. So far banning Rain abusers have been the more preferable choice. Of course there would be a time where we ban TOO MANY Rain abusers (ie banning Gyarados, Starmie, Tornadus, or even Thundurus-T), at which point banning Rain would be more desirable, but we haven't reached that point yet.

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It has been a long time since the community in a democratic sense, has chosen how the suspect process would go forth. To say 'so far banning rain abusers has been more preferable' is simply untrue. It is the case that so far suspect tests have not dealt with Drizzle because there has not been an overwhelming amount of support for it among the people who decide what we test (how they decide I will never know). But this says absolutely nothing about the desirability of either option.

Making bans simple as possible is certainly one that we keep in mind, but far from being top priority, which is banning only the things that should be banned, nothing more. Politoed + Rain Abusers has been a sticky issue, because we have 2 options - ban Rain or its Abusers. Either option solves the problem.

hahahahaha what are you talking about? you're correct in saying that there are 2 options for dealing with rain, either a) we ban drizzle itself, or b) we ban the so-called "abusers" of drizzle, but it's a plain and simple truth that option b has failed horribly. let's take a quick look at past bans in ou, particularly those of manaphy, thundurus, tornadus-t, and every single swift swimmer. what do all four of these bans have in common? the answer: every single one was caused by the idea that rain is too broken so we need to nerf it, yet despite the fact that we've been nerfing rain time and time again, it's still the most dominant force in the metagame. why in the world could this be? the only logical conclusion is that rain abusers aren't the problem, rain itself is the problem.

look at it from a different angle, perhaps. compare drizzle in ou to a smelly sock in a room that you're trying to freshen up. you try spraying the room with lysol. no good. you try dusting all the surfaces. no good. you try tearing down the walls and inspecting the drywall. doesn't work. you remove and replace the carpet. once again, you meet with failure. finally, someone points out the sock that's been sitting there the whole time, and you feel like an idiot because the real problem's been staring you in the face the whole time and you've been ignoring it. throw out the sock, and the problem's solved. sound familiar? rain is the putrid sock, and all the methods i listed above that you tried to use to get rid of the smell represent all the different bans we've employed for three years now to try to nerf rain. when will you realize that it's simply not going to work? to solve the issue, you have to go to the root of the problem, otherwise even if you keep tearing off the stem it's going to keep growing back and cause you endless grief. there's another analogy for the record books - rain is a weed that won't die unless you uproot it. hopefully everyone gets my point by now.

so if what pocket's saying is true - that banning rain abusers will solve the problem of rain - then why isn't the problem solved by now?

"once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

i think we could all take a page out of sir arthur conan doyle's book and recognize that we've tried everything except banning rain, and the problem persists, so it's clear that the only option which remains if we want to solve the problem is to ban drizzle. that's simple deductive reasoning, no fancy theorymon bullshit here.

some would have you believe that rain isn't the problem, but that you, the player, are the problem, because you just can't shut your mouth about how broken drizzle is. logic and reason would indicate that these people are dead wrong. get rid of rain, or our prized metagame will continue to be as mediocre as it is now.

You basically say that to deal with a single Pokemon (Terrakion in this case) you have to carry a single Pokemon but to deal with a certain playstyle this isn't possible. Sorry but this is a horrible argument. Any good playstyle cannot be beaten with one or two Pokemon, and it's no different with rain teams. If this could happen then those playstyle wouldn't be good in the first place.

fat yee said:

This is forecasting of a potential future metagame, which is a huge no-no. It cannot be justified on this site to argue against the banning of a pokemon by pointing out how bad the immediately resulting metagame is, the reasons being that it contradicts our nature of making bans as simple as possible by trying to predict a whole new metagame (this is why Iconic has his speech about not voting on which meta you like better in the voting threads), and that we will be better off anyway if we discover underlying broken factors and end up banning those too. If those things weren't broken needless to say it would also fairly certainly be a win if the voters had pushed Drizzle out.

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yee this would be true if our problem with Drizzle was that it was broken, but it isn't. The arguments to ban Drizzle so far are either because it limits diversity or because it makes the metagame too match-up dependand. In order to refute those arguments you need to try and show how a metagame without Drizzle wouldn't be any different in those aspects, or even worse in terms of diversity, so making some educated guesses about how a Drizzle-less metagame will be is necessary imo.

fat yee said:

I don't mean to necessarily point this out as a bad argument, but I would like to be assured you don't ever expect more than half of games to be matchup-based like in this example. It's generally agreed by everyone that skill needs to be the main factor with matchup minimized to a reasonable extent. If I was making an example I'd at least hope the metagame was deciding 10-20% or less based on matchup.

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This is very subjective so we can't really come to a conclusion, so i choose to go with the simple majority concept. If there is the option for the majority of the games (or even 50%) to not have match-up as a more important factor than skill then i don't think that we have a match-up problem. Maybe this percent is not the best i know, but i can't really talk about any other because this would be entirely arbitrary.

fat BKC said:

Manaphy, Thundurus-I, Tornadus-T, and a million Swift Swimmers... yeah ok!

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Those million swimmers were never banned and are still as viable in OU as they would be in a Drizzle less metagame so they are not really relevant. Furthermore, the common reasons why those Swift Swimmers were restricted was not solely Drizzle, it was Swift Swim as well, so you can't isolate and blame Drizzle for this.

fat Lavos Spawn said:

hahahahaha what are you talking about? you're correct in saying that there are 2 options for dealing with rain, either a) we ban drizzle itself, or b) we ban the so-called "abusers" of drizzle, but it's a plain and simple truth that option b has failed horribly. let's take a quick look at past bans in ou, particularly those of manaphy, thundurus, tornadus-t, and every single swift swimmer. what do all four of these bans have in common? the answer: every single one was caused by the idea that rain is too broken so we need to nerf it, yet despite the fact that we've been nerfing rain time and time again, it's still the most dominant force in the metagame. why in the world could this be? the only logical conclusion is that rain abusers aren't the problem, rain itself is the problem.

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Lavos Spawn, you decide to see it that way. Drizzle is not inherently broken and this is why we didn't ban it back when it was first introduced in 5th gen. This means that you chose to conclude that Drizzle is broken because 3 Pokemon that were banned from OU had Drizzle as their common factor. Even if this is true, i don't get why an ability that makes only 3 Pokemon out of its multiple abusers broken is accused of being broken. Speed Boost wasn't banned because it didn't break the majority of its users(abusers), just the minority of them, and this is the case with Drizzle too.

Alexwolf, that's...not what I said at all. Perhaps I was being unclear.

Basically, to counter other threats (Terrakion being the example here, but substitute in Garchomp, Latios, whatever non-weather threat) you beat the pokemon. If I want to make sure Terrakion doesn't kill my team, then I need to pack one or two things that can take a hit and stop Terrakion - Gliscor, Hippowdon, Forretress, etc. Alternatively I could go the offensive route and choose a pokemon that can outspeed and kill it - Scizor, Breloom, Latios, Espeon, etc. I have a diversity of options which lend themselves to a diversity of playstyles. Even if I end up packing two Terrakion checks/counters, I am not limited to a particular playstyle in doing so because I'm focused on countering the pokemon.

Contrast this to planning for the multitude of rain threats. Keldeo, DDGyara, FerroCruel, Jirachi, Feraligatr, etc. I could try to beat each of these pokemon individually, but that's quite difficult (even if it's possible, I think anybody will concede that it's quite difficult). Alternatively, rather than beating the pokemon, I can choose to beat the weather that makes these pokemon such huge threats. I can pack a Ninetales or Tyranitar to change the weather and rather than making the battle about beating their pokemon, simply making it about winning the weather war, which does half of the work in the first place.

This should not be a controversial observation. Just look at any standard sun team - let's say Ninetales, Donphan, Dragonite, Venusaur, Dugtrio, Volcarona (just throwing out a standard one, obviously there is potential for variation). I think most would agree that this is a basic, solid, viable sun team.
NOT ONE of the pokemon listed can take on Scarf Keldeo when the rain is up. None. But this team is still viable. Why is it viable? Because whoever's playing it knows they don't have to beat Keldeo, they aren't countering the pokemon. They're countering the weather. As long as Ninetales is alive longer than Politoed, Venusaur or Volcarona can handle Keldeo without too much trouble. The entire purpose of the battle has shifted - whoever can establish dominance of the weather is going to take a CRUSHING victory. Seriously, on the average rain team, only perhaps Latias can stand up to Venusaur in sun, and on the average sun team, only perhaps Latias is going to stand up to Keldeo in the rain. As soon as the weather war is decided the game is over.

Understand I'm not making the argument that rain threats are broken in the sense that they are so much harder to counter than Terrakion, Garchomp, etc. I'm saying that they are bad for the metagame because they are forcing - to counter you must control the weather, or otherwise make a weatherless team with six pokemon above the 108 speed tier and try to end the game before ten turns are up. This is a clear distinction between rain threats and other threats like Terrakion. Terrakion does not force me to play in a particular way, it just forces me to have an answer for it. Rain offense basically forces (again, this is not 100%, there are viable weatherless team, but the vast majority of viable teams focus on controlling the weather in some way) particular styles of play, which is toxic if we value creativity and variety in our metagame (as in our Desirable Characteristics of the Metagame thread).

jpw234 the mistake you are making is that you choose to view rain and sun teams as entities but not other kind of teams. Similarly, why do you mention Terrakion as a single Pokemon and you don't do the same for rain threats such as Starmie, Gyrados, etc? HO teams that focus on one side of the spectrum force the same situation you are describing with rain teams. You can't just check one of the threats they have, you must hold back all of them or else you lose.

I get that instead of dealing with each threat on a weather team you can just deal with their main source of power, the weather, but this is one way to deal with the problem, and even if it is the easier it doesn't mean it's the only one. First, many rain teams don't rely on rain being up too much and are still perfectly functional outside of it, meaning that even if you manage to keep rain away you still have to deal with most of its members individually. Second, you can deal with weather teams without having you own weather, as it has been shown and proved many times by succesful weatherless teams. Third, i get it that you prefer dealing with each Pokemon individually instead of trying to cut down the main source of power of weather teams, but this is just your opinion and not an indication that something is broken or limiting. Some may enjoy weather wars and some may not, but this is a preference issue and isn't really suited for this thread

Your example about sun isn't really showing anything because this is how offensive teams works. Most offensive teams don't have checks about many threatening Pokemon in OU, they just apply pressure and try to sweep before getting swept. This is not a characteristic of only sun teams, it is one of offensive teams.

jpw234 the mistake you are making is that you choose to view rain and sun teams as entities but not other kind of teams. Similarly, why do you mention Terrakion as a single Pokemon and you don't do the same for rain threats such as Starmie, Gyrados, etc? HO teams that focus on one side of the spectrum force the same situation you are describing with rain teams. You can't just check one of the threats they have, you must hold back all of them or else you lose.

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Other teams are not "entities" in the same sense that rain teams are. The entirety of a rain team is going to draw power from the rain. The entirety of a sand team is not going to. Obviously a battle is not a bunch of sequential 1v1 matchups and you have to look at things in context, but this is fundamentally different from rain teams where rain is the crux of the strategy. The example stands - let's consider a metagame without rain or sun. I have to have answers to Terrakion, Latios, Garchomp, Tyranitar, Hippowdon, Jellicent, etc. But in the end I'm going to do that by ensuring that among my six pokemon, I have answers to all of these individually, or as many of them as possible. There is not a common link or weakness amongst them that I can exploit or attack in order to win.

Second, you can deal with weather teams without having you own weather, as it has been shown and proved many times by succesful weatherless teams.

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Again I agree that weather wars are not the only way to beat rain, but they are undeniably the easiest and most common way. Weatherless teams that are viable are entirely HO, which is just seeking to bypass the effects of weather by outspeeding rather than imposing your own weather.

First, many rain teams don't rely on rain being up too much and are still perfectly functional outside of it, meaning that even if you manage to keep rain away you still have to deal with most of its members individually.

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Rain teams, by and large, are certainly reliant on rain being up. This is the nature of rain and sun as opposed to sand and hail. Sand and hail's effects are largely negative, they hurt opposing offensive pokemon, so a sand team's pokemon are not necessarily going to "take advantage" of sand in any particular way. Rain is different - every boost that rain gives is positive. Water attacks boosted, swift swimmers speed up, rain recovery, or defensive weaknesses removed. As long as you're planning on abusing the rain, you want to pack as many of those features into your team as you possibly can. But this conversely means that once the rain is gone, all of these patched-up weaknesses are exposed. Again not every pokemon has to do this, pokemon like Latias are important to check against specific threats, but the nature of rain is to be reliant on rain.

Third, i get it that you prefer dealing with each Pokemon individually instead of trying to cut down the main source of power of weather teams, but this is just your opinion and not an indication that something is broken or limiting. Some may enjoy weather wars and some may not, but this is a preference issue and isn't really suited for this thread

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This is not "just my opinion". Not weather wars, but the necessity of weather wars are inherently limiting to the metagame. Either run weather or run weatherless HO with no variation. Strategic innovation and creativity are codified in Smogon policy as desirable features of the metagame, I shouldn't have to hash that out again.

Your example about sun isn't really showing anything because this is how offensive teams works. Most offensive teams don't have checks about many threatening Pokemon in OU, they just apply pressure and try to sweep before getting swept. This is not a characteristic of only sun teams, it is one of offensive teams.

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My example about sun is incredibly telling. It should not be the case that I am building teams that lose if the rain is up and win if my weather is up with the entirety of the battle focused on this. Weatherless offense teams can win even if the rain is up by outspeeding, overpowering and revenging the opposition. Sun offense tries to do this but can only do this by first winning the weather war which is a categorical distinction between it and other types of offensive teams. If I have a sun offense team and am facing a rain team, offense or stall, my thought process is not "put pressure on and sweep right away!" My thought process is, "Kill Politoed or I lose. If I do, his whole team dies to Venusaur". Ask yourself this - do other offensive teams necessarily lose if the rain is up? No. Weather offense does. The entirety of the battle is about controlling the weather.

Making bans simple as possible is certainly one that we keep in mind, but far from being top priority, which is banning only the things that should be banned, nothing more. Politoed + Rain Abusers has been a sticky issue, because we have 2 options - ban Rain or its Abusers. Either option solves the problem.

Basically, if you have 2 equally viable options - you will weigh the pros and cons of each decision, and choose the one with the greater pro. So far banning Rain abusers have been the more preferable choice. Of course there would be a time where we ban TOO MANY Rain abusers (ie banning Gyarados, Starmie, Tornadus, or even Thundurus-T), at which point banning Rain would be more desirable, but we haven't reached that point yet.

Also I suggest re-reading the pro-Drizzle's argument, because you obviously do not understand them well (which is NOT good, if you're debating...)

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I did just write a tl;dr on why I don't see this as a problem that can be solved by banning more abusers, we have banned a ton of rain abusers that would likely not be broken outside of rain, and lastly I don't see how you can say I don't understand the opposing side when you're failing to see mine (and even those from your own side) so badly. Elaborate more.

yee this would be true if our problem with Drizzle was that it was broken, but it isn't. The arguments to ban Drizzle so far are either because it limits diversity or because it makes the metagame too match-up dependand. In order to defute those arguments you need to try and show how a metagame without Drizzle wouldn't be any different in those aspects, or even worse in terms of diversity, so making some educated guesses about how a Drizzle-less metagame will be i necessary imo.

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My problem with Drizzle is that it is broken, the term doesn't have a definition so it can mean all kinds of things. What I did was show why Drizzle itself causes unhealthy things to happen in our current metagame, instead of talking about why I would likely prefer a metagame without it.

Even if this is true, i don't get why an ability that makes only 3 Pokemon out of its mulitple abusers broken is accused of being broken. Speed Boost wasn't banned because it didn't break the majority of its users(abusers), just the minority of them, and this is the case with Drizzle too.

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Let's agree on what this number really is, because I don't consider the effective banning of all of those Swift Swimmers with Rain to just be a 0.

As a side note it does annoy me that you're technically facing an Uber pokemon when you're facing a Swift Swimmer using a Rain team.

What annoys me is that you guys are acting as if we banned like 15 Rain Abusers. If I recall correctly, we've only banned Tornadus-T and Swift Swimmers in Rain so basically Kingdra and Kabutops. Thundurus-I hasn't been banned because it was broken in Rain, it was broken by itself. Tornadus-T is probably the first real Rain Abuser that we banned and you guys can't deny it, even when Rain wasn't up, that thing was extremely good because of Regenerator. Don't forget that Hurricane is still 70% if Rain isn't up, which means it's like Focus Blast and I don't think that you guys are considering Gengar or other Focus Blast users like Landorus-I as bad Pokemon just because Focus Blast has a poor accuracy. Even without Rain, Tornadus-T only had a few counters.

Then what did we ban? Excadrill, Blaziken, Deoxys-S and Deoxys-D. Are these things Rain Abusers? Clearly not. What's the current problem with Drizzle? Keldeo. Keldeo is the biggest issue with Rain because it's clearly too strong even with the Choice Scarf since Rain boosts its Water Moves. Is Keldeo only broken in Rain? Absolutely not and it's at least as good in Sand as it is in Rain. Tyranitar removes its checks and counters way too easily allowing Specs/Ebelt Keldeo to destroy your Team. In addition, Keldeo only has a few counters and those counters can be killed by HP Ghost from SpecsKeldeo (Jellicent, Celebi, Latios, Latias, Starmie...). Icy Wind + HP Bug easily destroys the last ones and since the current Metagame is extremely offensive, things like Jellicent and Amoonguss aren't really often used which means you have to rely on Latios or Starmie to check Keldeo, great.

As for now I really think that Drizzle shouldn't be banned but Keldeo should be suspected again. I can't remember how many players voted for Keldeo OU but I think it was almost 85%, I'm maybe wrong. If as much people voted OU there's probably a reason. Keldeo is clearly the most threatening Pokemon when the Rain is up and it's also extremely threatening when it's not so I don't really understand why you guys still didn't talk about it because without Keldeo, can you guys tell me why Drizzle is broken?

Also I just reminded me that Manaphy was voted Uber, probably because it was too broken with Rain but would it be unbanned if Drizzle gets banned? I mean, Tail Glow + great BS everywhere and you guys wouldn't complain about this? Hey come on, let's be serious, you guys are whining because you have to bring Celebi etc to check Rain Teams and you would allow Manaphy if Drizzle gets banned? What are you going to use to counter or check Manaphy?